Yahoo Japan — an independent entity from Yahoo — has decided to forgo the Bing transition and will be using Google search results, Reuters announced today.
Yahoo Japan is the number one Japanese portal and the switch to Google organic and paid search results should tip Google’s international numbers considerably.
“At a news conference, Yahoo Japan President Masahiro Inoue said the Japanese firm had after a thorough investigation concluded that Microsoft’s search technology was not sufficiently strong enough for its needs, giving Japanese language search capabilities as one example,” Reuters reported.
Yahoo and Microsoft announced more details of the coming integration of their two search engines and it appears from various reports out there that many people do not fully understand how the changes are going to play out.
The two had previously given details about some of the paid search changes, but this release goes in to more details about both organic and paid search. So what are they? I will list the major changes, as I see them, below.
Microsoft will provide the results for both paid and organic results for both engines.
The publication of an online style guide and a site dedicated to helping publishers is another instance of Yahoo’s concentration on content, and move away from search.
This is a big commitment to the online publishing space and the style guide could become the AP stylebook for the web.
“The growth of online communication is only accelerating,” said Chris Barr, senior editorial director of Yahoo!, “but there hasn’t been a comprehensive manual of online editorial best practices to guide writers and editors. As the volume of Internet content grows and people become increasingly dependent upon clear and concise content, Yahoo! is pleased to be able to share these principles for writing for an online audience that we have amassed over the course of our 15-year history.”
Getting videos into search results can be tricky. Wordpress SEO expert, Joost de Valk, has blogged a technical guide to improving your SEO results for videos.
“It seems as though everyone is focusing on XML Sitemaps, while there’s actually not 1 but 4 methods of getting Google to recognize your video content,” Joost de Valk noted.
With the growth of video online – YouTube is the third most popular site online – being able to get your videos ranked well in the search engines is becoming an important part of anyone’s marketing effort.
More than two dozen marketers, including 10e20 President Chris Winfield and CMO Second Step Search Loren Baker have joined forces to establish a new agency, BlueGlass Interactive.
The move comes at a time when clients are demanding that consultancies provide a broad menu of services, from development to execution of digital marketing campaigns.
In addition to Winfield, BlueGlass CMO, and Baker, SVP of online PR, the management team includes: Dave Snyder, SVP, search; Brent Csutoras, SVP, viral marketing; Jordan Kasteler, SVP, content; Tony Wang, CTO; and Danielle Winfield, VP, operations.
As many as 30 countries world wide are considering prosecution of Google for its collection of data from unsecured hotspots while gathering information for its Street View project, according to the Age. The United States, many countries in Europe and Asia Pacific are among those now looking at Google’s actions.
Google sent letters to three members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee stating they did not think they had done anything illegal.
Yahoo is really pushing its connection with Facebook, as Liva Judic reported Monday, and now they have made a clever use with Yahoo Answers.
As their blog reports a “new Yahoo! Answers feature that will allow you to share your Answers content with your Facebook friends! This means your friends on Facebook can now help you answer your questions if you choose to share them”. A great way to take advantage of the huge popularity of social media – with any luck this widget could become the next Four Square.
Heat mapping tools and web page interactive overlays have been popular topics for the past few years and have proven handy in improving conversion and visitor clicks. 3m now offers web site owners a tool to check page layouts and given feedback on how to manipulate the design to improve it.
“You face many challenges in visual effectiveness. Even minor design changes can have a dramatic impact on the achievement of your visual goals. To combat these subjective challenges we created 3M VAS: Which provides a unique and rapid insight into what viewers will notice in the first 3-5 seconds of exposure,” the website states.
We know geeks love Pacman – well this one does and it seems the people over at Google are also part of the Pacman fan club. The doodle of the day is in honor of Pacman’s 30th birthday – a functional game.
In place of the Feeling Lucky button is an Insert Coin one that when clicked starts the game. Have fun folks it is Friday after all.
UPDATE: It’s simultaneous 2-player! Hit ‘Insert coin’ a second time!
While many of the search marketing leaders were busy at SES NY this past week, Google launched a couple of products that showed a major move into the behavioral targeting realm. There were many posts and comments on the two new features in Adwords – Search Funnels and Ad Retargeting.
But what I did not really read was how these changes show an interest in user behavior and that Google now seems to be quietly angling its way into behavioral marketing.
